How can you speak (or write) about the unspeakable? I hate people who do that. People who tell me their dreams. More often than not ending with the line: “I can’t describe it.”
Right, don’t! It would be like showing the invisible.
The great Ivan Lendl once said: “I don’t talk about what’s inside me, because there is nothing inside me.”
“Only shit,” Slavoj Zizek would add. “The truth is out there.”
But what if the unspeakable is out there? What about Cthulhu? About Clulu, Clooloo, about Cthulu, Cthullu, about C’thulhu or Cighulu or C’thlu, Kathulu, Kutulu, Kthulhu, Q’thulu or K’tulu, Kthulhut, about Cuitiliú or Thu Thu?
Yes, what? I can’t even pronounce IT.
That is what we need Victoria for. For the supernatural and the mainstream. Netting together the uncanny, pop, the dawn of man, Dracula, Twilight, Buffy, all other vampires, Carl Jung, zombies, Bruno Schulz, the Elder Things, Cronenberg and “Vicki” Nelson.
Yes again: Victoria Nelson is a character in Tanya Huff ‘s Blood Books and on Blood Ties. After being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, Vicki left the police department to become a private investigator. As a result of leaving the force, her love life with her former partner, Detective Celluci, has become stressful. Meanwhile, her growing attraction to Henry, a vampire, putts her in the centre of a love triangle.
I know this thing with names by heart and I love it. Christopher Roths are drug addicts, racing cyclists, film editors, weathermen, killers; even a horror movie is called like me. The truth is out there. Victoria mentions the other Victoria in Gothica (p.127) in a chapter about Tanja Huff. First she just describes the character who falls for Henry, later she once calls her “Vicky”, that’s it. No Nelson. The uncanny is out there. The Secret Life of Puppets. What a nice title! What a great book.
For our 2081 congress she came all the way from San Francisco to Berlin and gave the first speech of the day in the Kunst-Werke. 40 minutes. She told this wonderful story. The next morning Victoria walked with us to the Olympic Stadium despite having the right shoes with her. That night we had pizza and red whine on Ackerstraße with Petit, Bob Last and Annabelle, we talked about JG Ballard and it was all there. Out there.